“I can’t tell you a thing,” declared Sallie. “I promised not to and I can’t. There is a sort of secret. It isn’t anything very bad. It’s just something that Doctor Rhodes thinks might make a difference in the attendance if it were known—Goodness! I’ve told you more now than I meant to. Please don’t talk about it, Henrietta.”
“Of course I won’t,” promised Henrietta, “but I’m just as curious as I can be and I’m going to pump poor old Abbie.”
But poor old Abbie showed unexpected strength of mind; she put her fingers into her ears and refused to listen to Henrietta’s blandishments.
“It ain’t for me,” said Abbie, “livin’ here like I be, to be givin’ things away to prying young persons like you and that Jane Pool child that’s always pesterin’ me about my past. I know what I know but you ain’t goin’ to. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.”
Every week, some time between three and five o’clock on Saturday afternoon, every pupil, not excepting even the lofty Seniors, was expected to visit the huge attic above the older portion of Highland Hall. Here, arranged in a neat border all around the big room, were the girls’ trunks. Only on Saturdays were the girls permitted to visit them—it seemed, Bettie said, almost like getting back home to see them again each week.
Near the windows were benches and numerous brushes and boxes of blacking. It was here that the girls blacked their shoes, or whitened them, according to their needs. Saturday, likewise, was the day for that.
The third Saturday after Christmas, Mabel, always a little awkward, lost her balance and fell backward into an open trunk. In her efforts to save herself she clutched things as she crashed through the flimsy tray. She came up with a ribbon belt in her hand. There was an odd buckle on the belt. Mabel looked at it curiously. Bettie, polishing one of her best black shoes glanced at it too. Then she looked at Mabel and lifted an inquiring eyebrow. Then both girls stooped to look at the name on the trunk. It was there in plain letters, “Gladys E. De Milligan.”
And then Gladys herself appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs with a second armful of clothing to store in her trunk. She flew at surprised Mabel like a small whirlwind and snatched the belt from her hand.
“What do you mean,” she stormed, “prying in my trunk! And taking my things. I caught you doing it—I’ll tell all the girls.”
“I didn’t pry in your trunk,” protested Mabel. “I just fell in. Goodness knows I didn’t want to skin my shoulder on your old trunk; and that belt is just what I got when I grabbed.”